Propylene resins are of wide use in various industrial parts in automobiles, appliances, etc. because of their lightweight, processability and the like. For particular applications where scratch resistance is required, such as exterior and interior parts, propylene resin formed articles can be endowed with scratch resistance by forming a hard coat comprising an ultraviolet-curing acrylic resin.
The inventors previously proposed a process for producing such propylene resin formed articles with a hard coat as disclosed in JP-A-1-180338 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"), in which a coating film comprising an ultraviolet-curing acrylic resin is formed on a propylene resin film or sheet and, after a desired forming step such as laminate molding and/or thermoforming, the coating film is irradiated with ultraviolet rays to cure the ultraviolet-curing acrylic resin.
In the course of further studies on the above-described process, however, the inventors were confronted with the problem that the hard coat on propylene resin formed articles having been subjected to thermoforming has considerably reduced gloss. This turned out to be a problem inherent to the above-mentioned specific process, which never occurs in conventional techniques in which a coating film of an ultraviolet-curing resin is formed on a thermoformed article and then irradiated with ultraviolet rays to provide a hard coat.